Brazilian Policemen beat a protester during a march against U.S. President George W. Bush in Sao Paulo, Thursday, March 8, 2007.
(sung like a Von Trapp)
Raiding SWAT teams and canisters of tear gas,
Marauding police with riot gear and masks,
Fleeing protestors as a billy club swings,
These are a few of your government’s favorite things!
(Picture from the AP)
Radley Balko has a post up today about yet another example of SWAT team overkill, this time out of Akron, Ohio:
Georgette Prince was making a quick run to the store last Thursday morning for orange soda and lottery tickets — a venture that should have been an uneventful five-minute trip but became a terrifying 20-minute ordeal.
The unsuspecting Prince was caught in the storm of a SWAT team raid that had her in fear for her life.
“I thought I was going to be shot. I thought I was going to die,” Prince recalled over the weekend as she sat in the living room of her Grace Avenue home.
She said she was just stepping out the front door of Mr. Pantry, a Copley Road convenience store, when her world became a frantic, frightening blur of guns, shouts and shoves of helmeted, armored men with guns.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” Prince said.
What was happening was Operation Milkman, an investigation of a multimillion-dollar, multicounty shoplifting ring that led last Thursday morning to raids at nine businesses and the arrests of nearly two dozen people in Summit, Portage and Medina counties
That’s right, a SWAT raid over a shoplifting investigation, and an innocent civilian and her son were caught in the middle:
“I was holding the pop in my arms and was backing out the door, pushing it open with my back,” Prince said.
“The next thing I know, I’m being shoved back into the store and someone is pointing a rifle at me, yelling at me to get back, get back and to get down on the floor.”
With the rifle trained on her and an officer clad in helmet and body armor advancing toward her, Prince went to the floor face-down. She said her hands were pulled behind her back and she was handcuffed.
“I was crying and telling them my son was outside in the car,” she said.
According to Prince, another customer, a man, ran toward the cooler when officers barged in and she saw the owner of the store at the counter.
“He had a gun on his hip… ,” Prince said. “I was just hoping he didn’t do anything. I was thinking if the owner made any kind of move, I was going to get killed.
“They (the officers) kept yelling: `Tell us where the guns and money are.’ I was so scared.”
Outside the store, Prince’s son found himself in an equally frightening situation as he stared down the barrel of a rifle.
“I was just sitting in the car waiting for my mom” when a SWAT officer pointed a rifle at him, Davonte said.
“He was looking at me through the rifle’s scope and telling me to get out of the Jeep, get on the ground and put my hands behind my back,” Davonte said.
Because, you see, a twelve year-old sitting in a car in front of a convenience store is obviously up to no good. The response from the police is typical of what one sees in this situation:
After questioning the officers involved, the sheriff’s office confirmed the Prince family’s version of the day’s events for the most part, but noted that standard entry procedures were followed.
“We believe everything was done according to the book,” said Keith Thornton, an inspector with the sheriff’s office. He stressed that officers “did nothing wrong and followed protocol and procedure.”
Capt. Richard Roach, who was at the scene as the tactical command leader, concurred with Thornton’s assessment.
“It was a standard SWAT entry,” Roach said. “It is designed to be quick, loud and startling.”
And startling it was, as Ms. Prince and her son can attest.
I’ll let this article answer that one:
Four months into his job, a police officer in Mississippi holds a gun to the head of an unarmed teenager and puts him in a chokehold. A rookie officer in Illinois gets into a car chase that kills a driver. And a new campus policeman in Indiana shoots an unarmed student to death.
Some are blaming these harrowing episodes on what an Associated Press survey found is a common practice across the country: At least 30 states let some newly hired local law enforcement officers hit the streets with a gun, a badge and little or no training.
These states allow a certain grace period — six months or a year in most cases, two years in Mississippi and Wisconsin — before rookies must be sent to a police academy. In many cases, these recruits are supposed to be supervised by a full-fledged officer, but that does not always happen.
This is disturbing on so many different levels. It’s a bad thing for everyone involved: giving untrained personnel the weapons to implement deadly force is as much a disservice to them as it is to the citizenry they are supposed to be protecting and serving. I honestly can’t say I am surprised, though. This very laissez-faire attitude towards regulation of police officers has become pervasive in American society. What does it say about our society where we give any Joe Schmo who wants to be a cop a badge and a gun?
The bottom line is that if you haven’t been properly trained, you shouldn’t come within 10 feet of a firearm. This is as true for police officers as it is for civilians. Government seems to understand one part of that deal; it’s a shame it can’t seem to abide by the second.
This is great news.
WASHINGTON — Law enforcement agencies across the country have been upgrading their firepower to deal with what they say is the increasing presence of high-powered weapons on the streets.
Scott Knight, chairman of the Firearms Committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, says an informal survey of about 20 departments revealed that since 2004 all of the agencies have either added weapons to officers’ patrol units or have replaced existing weaponry with military-style arms.
Knight, police chief in Chaska, Minn., says the upgrades have occurred since a national ban on certain assault weapons expired in September 2004. The ban, passed in 1994, in part prohibited domestic gunmakers from producing semi-automatic weapons and ammunition dispensers holding more than 10 rounds.
“This (weapons upgrade) is being done with an eye to the absolute knowledge that more higher-caliber weapons are on the street since the expiration of the ban,” Knight said. He said his own department of about 20 officers is in the midst of determining whether to upgrade its weapons.
Ah, yes. The “assault weapons” ban. Prior to the ’94 ban, the term “assault weapons” did not exist. In fact, now that the ban has (thankfully) expired, that term isn’t really used much anymore, except by gun-banning groups like the Brady folks and police chief associations. For the record, USA Today is completely wrong in stating that the ban prohibited domestic gunmakers from producing semi-automatic weapons. It banned them from producing semi-automatic weapons that looked scary, weapons that looked “militaristic.” They were still completely free to produce semi-automatic weapons as long as said weapons didn’t look like they were a military weapon.
This is why I find it hard to believe that the streets of American have suddenly been flooded with a glut of semi-automatic weapons with the expiration of the ban. The only thing the streets could have been flooded with are weapons that look mean. Nothing has changed with regard to the operation and effectiveness of legal weapons. Of course, there might have been an increase in the amount of automatic weapons on streets in the U.S. (unlikely, but possible). However, this would have absolutely nothing to do with the “assault weapons” ban, as fully automatic firearms have been illegal without special permission from the BATF since 1934. This of course begs the question as to why Chief Knight felt it was necessary to bring up the “assault weapons” ban. He wouldn’t have an ulterior motive, would he?
In Houston, where homicides were up as much as 25% in 2006 over the previous year, Police Chief Harold Hurtt says the AK-47 assault rifle has become “kind of a weapon of choice” for warring gangs, major drug distributors and immigrant smugglers in a city that has become a major transit point for criminals.
“The reality on the street is that many of these weapons are readily available,” says Hurtt, whose department began upgrading its weaponry with assault-style arms about three years ago before he arrived from Phoenix.
I’m not sure this article could get more stereotypical if it tried. Oh no, it’s the AK-47 boogeyman out to get you! I’m surprised Chief Hurtt didn’t drop the other three horsemen of the gun control apocalypse: the TEC-9, Uzi, and AR variants.
I don’t doubt that there are some very nasty people out there with some nasty firearms. The police need to be equipped to effectively deal with these people. But the overall increased militarization of our police departments, when coupled with the drive to disarm our populace, is not a good thing for liberty.
UPDATE: Rob Miller over at Homeland Stupidity has a post up on the same article, including some statistics to refute the assertions of the Chiefs.
The already sordid case from Manassas Park has taken another turn. Greg L, the proprietor of BVBL, has received a cease and desist letter from an attorney who represents the City of Manassas Park, its police chief, and several other officers.
I would say this is unbelievable, but it’s actually SOP for city officials caught in a compromising legal situation. Of course, as Greg mentions over at his place, if the case was to go forward, the media coverage, and more importantly, discovery, would be one of the best things to happen to David Ruttenberg. Which is why it won’t; this is just an attempt to strong arm into silence those who have the gall to call out their political masters.
If you need background, check out BVBL’s collection of posts here, and Radley Balko’s here.
